I want to live in Mexico!! All the places we’ve visited from the beaches in the east to the desert in the west have been fantastic and Mexico City is the icing on the cake. We’ve had such a great week here soaking up big city vibes and catching up with old and new friends. It has changed a lot and seems cleaner, friendlier, trendier (and safer!) than when I travelled here a few times for work in 2003-05. Also, I was probably overwhelmed by the chaos and noise back then whereas now we are used to it. But it’s not all big city chic – the first night we donned our masks and went to a Lucha Libra match. Read more

Warning: This blog contains material that could be detrimental to your mental health and overall well-being. View the photographs with caution and if you experience any symptoms of lightheadedness, malaise, speaking in tongues or an urge for an ice cold Mojito contact you travel agent immediately. Failing do to so could lead to hysteria, chronic incoherence and in extreme cases much worse. Read more

We arrived in La Paz (Spanish for peace) which is almost at the bottom of Baja California, the long narrow strip of land which runs parallel to the west coast of Mexico. It’s a rough desert landscape with steep mountains, dry plains and a diversity of beaches but I should have realized something fishy was afoot after previewing our first photo. We assumed the cacti were friendly but just look at the one in the background giving me the finger and probably having a laugh at my expense, they must have seen us coming. Read more

I guess it was inevitable that the germs lurking in many corners would get us at some point and we were only just back in Mexico when Montezuma struck! Hence the delay in posting photos from San Cristobal de Las Casas and Oaxaca. Montezuma was an Aztec emperor with a fierce reputation who has given name to what is known in other countries as Delhi Belly or the Cairo Twostep. My attack was not sweet but at least it was short whereas poor Nick has been on & off for the last 3 weeks, possibly suffering multiple attacks. Once you’re affected you are probably more susceptible and he also suffered some ill-advised medicine which only made things worse (PS he is better again). Enough of that… In between days spent indoors we did see some lovely places. Read more

One hundred and fifty km west of Cancun on the Yucatan peninsula is Valladolid pronounced “Vayadolid”. There is something nice about this town and that something made us come back for a second time, it’s actually the third counting a one night stop at the end of our Yucatan drive. Unbeknown we must have been lured back by the Valladolid magic but whatever the reason we are glad we did.

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Each year leading up to the Day of the Lady of Guadalupe, on the 12th of December, groups of mostly young men head towards cities that have cathedrals dedicated to the Lady of Guadalupe to celebrate the event. Read more

We saw so much on this trip through Yucatan. Nick already wrote about Valladolid and Izamal, the small towns we very much enjoyed, and we also visited two of the best known Mayan ruins: Chichen Itza and Uxmal.

In the souvenir shops in Playa del Carmen and Isla Mujeres we have seen endless rows of plastic pyramids and colourful skulls. Now having seen these ancient Mayan ruins and learnt about the history we have a better understanding of the meanings of these symbols. Read more

Of all the countries we have visited the greatest contrast by far is between Japan and Mexico. Design in the Land of the Rising Sun was meticulously crafted over centuries, it eliminates waste and strives for perfection where as Mexico has created style out of chaos, colour and imagination, the result leaves you begging for more. Read more

Isla Mujeres (Island of Women) is a colourful island with plenty of history, it got its name when the Spanish slave trader Francisco Hernandez Cordova on his way to Cuba arrived on the island to add to his human cargo but found no inhabitants only statues of nude females.  No coincidence as the island was a Mayan sanctuary to the goddess Ixchel, the goddess of love, fertility and medicine. Read more

As we are learning to live this travelling life, we find that every so often we need to stop and rest. So after travelling around the US and Canada for 6 weeks and covering huge distances, we were looking for somewhere warm by the beach where we could do a bit of home cooking and exercise more regularly to recover from all the melted cheese we had enjoyed! Enter Playa del Carmen, a small town on the Caribbean Sea south of Cancun, Mexico. Read more